Chapter XXICivilian Personnel

Introduction and Background

ADMINISTRATION of the civilian personnel of the Naval Establishment
was one of the Navy Department's major tasks during World War
II. By the end of the war, the Navy Department was the largest single
employer of industrial labor in the world, with, on June 30, 1945, close
to 753,000 people on its payrolls. of this number, about 20,000 were employed
in Washington in the Navy Department itself.1
The largest part
of those employed in the field were production workers in the continental
Navy Yards, ordnance plants, aviation, and supply establishments, and in
several thousand other smaller production activities operated by the Navy
Department.

Until almost the end of the 19th century, a civilian, in order to obtain
a job with the Federal Government, had to have some form of political
backing. Employment under the Navy Department, whether in the field
or in Washington, was no exception to the rule. Political connections
with the party in power became a particularly potent factor in obtaining
and holding a Government job during the Jacksonville era, when the so-called
spoils system for filling government positions was in vogue. At
about the middle of the century, men in private life interested in government
reform, supported by many upper-level officials in the Executive
branch of the government and even by some in the Legislative branch
began to press for the adoption of a merit system for the appointment,
promotion, setting of wages and salaries, of government employees and
for protecting them against arbitrary discharge and other forms of unfair treatment.

When Gideon Welles became secretary of the Navy in Abraham Lincoln's
cabinet in 1861, he made an attack on the system, presumably as
he had had experience with political influence and interference in the

--882--

appointment and handling of civilian personnel when he was Chief of the
Bureau of Provisions and Clothing from 1846 to 1849. He made little
progress, but did succeed in getting Congress to pass a law (12 Stat.
587-34 USC 505) in July, 1862, providing "That the hours of labor and
the rate of wages of the employees in the navy yards shall conform as
nearly as is consistent with the public interest with those of private
establishments in the immediate vicinity of the respective yards, to be determined
by the commandants of the navy yards subject to the approval
and revision of the Secretary of the Navy."

This was probably the easiest first step to take in personnel reform
because it met with little opposition from those currently employed at
the navy yards, and did not affect the patronage of the politicians. It remained
the basic law for determining the wages of civilian employees of
the Naval Establishment in the artisan and labor categories through the
years, but was placed in abeyance by Congress during the depression of
the 1930's. During World War II, it was modified by the President under
his war powers to fit in with the policies adopted by the War Labor
Board and other agencies for handling such matters.

Civil Service reform became a plank in the platforms of both political
parties after the Civil War. President Hayes was a militant civil service
reformer, but could do little to further the cause during his own administration.
The Pendleton Civil Service Act establishing the Civil Service
Commission was, however, passed on 1883 during the administration of
President Arthur, partly as a result of the indignation aroused over the
assassination of President Garfield by a disappointed office seeker; but its
scope was very limited at first. Its initial coverage for all departments was
only 13,900 employees, about 10% of the total employed. In the case of
the Navy Department, it covered only white collar employees receiving
salaries of more than $720.00 per annum. Other white collar positions
were gradually placed under Civil Service. On May 6, 1896, President
Cleveland extended civil service to all civilian white collar employees of
the Naval Establishment.

Civilians employed in the Naval Establishment are classified under two
categories: So-called "White collar Workers" and "Blue collar Workers."
The White collar category consists principally of Executives, engineering
and Scientific personnel, Draftsmen, Stenographers and Typists, File CLerks,
Guards, and similar occupations paid on a per annum basis. The merit
system was at first applied only to white collar workers by placing the
classification of positions, the determination of the eligibility of applicants,
the establishment of eligible registers, and changes in their status under
the Civil Service Commission.

Blue collar workers are those who, broadly speaking, produce with

--883--

their hands. They are known as Ungraded or Per Diem employees. For
many years before and during World War II, they were classified under
four groups, and continue to be so grouped: Group I, Laborers and others
engaged upon manual work, which requires no mechanical skill or other
trade knowledge; Group II, helpers and others engaged upon work which
requires some mechanical skill or trade knowledge; Group III, artisans;
and Group IVa, supervisors of Group I, Group II, and Group III employees.

No serious attempt was made to extend the merit system to blue collar
workers until Benjamin F. Tracy became Secretary of the Navy in
1889, in the Benjamin Harrison administration (1889-1893). In his annual
report for the year 1891, Tracy had this to say:

"How shall the Navy
Department get good foremen and good workmen in its building and
repair yards? ... Everybody knows, and it is of no use to evade the fact,
that the navy yards have heretofore been used largely for purposes of
political patronage. The system which I found in existence placed the power
of the appointment of workmen in the hands of the foremen, and the
foremen were generally political appointees. With such a system it was
impossible that the test of fitness for employment at the yard should be
the skill of the applicant. ..."2

In April 1891, he took the drastic step of declaring vacant all upper
level supervisory positions in the navy yards. Boards of officers were appointed
to examine candidates for the positions. The incumbents were
allowed to compete, as well as all other navy yard employees and candidates
from outside. The Navy Department appointed in every case the
men recommended by the Boards. In some instances, the Boards found
no candidate qualified. In such cases, a temporary appointment was made
and a further examination was held. By this method, qualified foremen
were obtained, and even more importantly, the appointee was no longer
beholden to a political sponsor. From then on, all supervisory positions
of that kind were filled only after written examination of candidates and
appraisal of their past experience and records.

Secretary Tracy's next step was taken, in applying merit as the basis
for the employment of blue collar workers, in an Order of September 1,
1891, setting up Labor Boards at navy yards and other activities employing
large numbers of such workers. The Labor Board consisted of officers
and civilians representing the various labor-employing departments of the
activity, with a permanent civilian recorder as its full-time working member.

The pattern of Labor Board procedures was much the same as that of
the Civil Service Commission in applying the merit system to the

--884--

employment of white collar personnel. The Labor Boards prepared registers by
trades, helpers, and laborers, of applicants for jobs. Before placing a name
on the register, such steps as practicable were taken to ascertain what experience
the applicant had actually had in the employment requested.
From the registers of eligibles, names in the order of their place on the
lists were certified to fill the requisitions for Group I, II, and III personnel
submitted by the working departments of the activity. The procedure
was not, however, so simple as it sound, because preference of various
kinds and degrees had to be given to veterans, former naval personnel,
former navy yards employees, etc, in determining their place on the lists,
in accordance with laws passed by Congress form time to time; but Labor
Boards stood the test of time up to World War II, when some modifications
in their personnel and procedures were made. The Civil Service
Commission took over general supervision of Labor Boards in 1911, but
left them with considerable autonomy in carrying out their functions.

Thus, the principal steps had been taken buy the turn of the century
to substitute the merit system for political and other external influences
in the employment, promotion, and payment of civilian personnel. Little
had, however, been done to centralize in one place in the Navy Department,
the administration of civilian employees. The Navy Regulations
placed civilian personnel under the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, but
the bureaus necessarily had crucial interest in the employment and management
of such personnel, as civilians were their working forces in the
field, and were paid from their appropriations. These were particularly
important considerations in the case of the technical bureaus.

One of the objectives of Truman Newberry, during his short tenure as
Secretary of the Navy terminating in 1909, was to bring about better
organization and management of the nay yards. One facet of this program
was more effective centralized administration of civilian personnel in
the Navy Department itself. With the appointment of George von L.
Meyer as Secretary of the Navy on March 4, 1909, the Newberry reforms
were largely discarded, and the Aide System was adopted, to advise the
Secretary in all matters of Navy Department administration, including the
shore establishments. Josephus Daniels, the next Secretary of the Navy,
allowed the system to lapse, with the result that no significant change
was made in civilian personnel administration until a Director of Navy
Yards was added to the Assistant Secretary's organization in 1921.

Navy Yards Division

The policies and procedures that had been developed for the employment
of civilian personnel in the field through the Labor Boards were

--885--

basically sound, so that no particular difficulty was experienced in coping
with the problem during World War II. That war was not a long one for
the United States, and did not, in any case, strain the industrial manpower
of the nation excessively. In 1916, after the war had been in progress in
Europe for two years, there were fewer than 1000 civilian employees in
the Navy Department in Washington, with about 36,000 in the shore
establishment as a whole. When a shortage in white collar employees in
the Navy Department began to make itself felt, it was largely relieved
by the enrollment of Naval reservists, both men and women, to the
number of about 4,000. At the peak, civilian employment in the Naval
Establishment rose to about 130,000 in
June 1818.3

However, World War I underlined the need for centralized administration
in the Navy Department of shore establishments and their civilian
personnel. Edwin Denby succeeded Josephus Daniels as Secretary of
the Navy in March 1921, and was promptly briefed on this segment of
Navy Department organization and administration. He issued General
Order No. 68 under date of September 6, 1921, establishing a Navy Yard
Division under the immediate supervision of the Assistant Secretary of
the Navy.

On June 4, 1934, the title was broadened to Shore Establishment
Division (SOSED). Its functions, listed under ten headings, were repeated
in General Order No. 13 of May 13, 1935, and covered principally the
physical aspects of the development and management of the shore establishments,
as described in the chapter on
"Shore Establishment." Only
one of the ten headings made mention of personnel, as follows: "Civilian
Personnel and Labor and all matters pertaining thereto, including the
maintenance of high morale."

That the development and overall administration of the facilities of
the shore establishments and their users were, early in 1940, still considered
SOSED's paramount functions is indicated by the length of the testimony
given on that subject before the House Naval Affairs Committee by Captain
C.W. Fisher, the Director, at that time, of SOSED. Only a few
pages in his lengthy testimony are devoted to civilian personnel; the rest
to the physical aspects and uses of the shore establishments. But the emphasis
was shifting rapidly to personnel when extensive expansion of
civilian forces became imperative. The creation of the Division of Personnel
Supervision and Management (PS&M) by the Secretary on December
6, 1938, to be described presently, accelerated the transition, as SOSED
had to share certain responsibilities for civilian personnel in the field with
PS&M.

--886--

Thus, when the President declared a National Emergency due to the
outbreak of World War II in Europe on September 1, 1939, the Navy
Department had a fairly complete organization for administering civilian
personnel, but much was lacking to implement the required procedures
for expansion in the Navy Department itself and in the field. Normally,
lessons to be learned from World War II are in this work pointed out
with the recital of the pertinent experiences, or in the summary at the
end of specific chapters. But it is appropriate, in the case of civilian personnel,
to begin with a recital of a few of the obstacles that lay in the
path of easy expansion of civilian personnel, as some of them contain
valuable lessons for future guidance.

Expansion Problems

A basic administrative problem of the Navy Department practically
throughout World War II was the enormous expansion in civilian personnel
that had to be made to carry the work load of its shore establishments.
If the expansion had been confined only to the navy yards and
other peacetime activities in existence at the outbreak of the war the task
would not have been too difficult, as Labor Boards operated by competent
officers, permanent recorders, and civilian staff were, together with other
mechanisms for handling civilian personnel, going parts of navy yard
organizations. But, these mechanisms were lacking the new activities
employing Navy Department civilian personnel. The number of activities
in the Navy's shore establishment had to be increased about ten-fold.
Many of these were, of course, small. But, the new ones especially suffered
from the lack of written instructions for their guidance in building up
and managing their working forces.4

The Navy Department had prepared no Manual of Instructions to fill
this need. Some 8000 uncodified letters of instruction and information on
civilian personnel matters ad been issued by the Navy Department going
back to about 1910. These were not available for distribution to the new
activities, and would not have been helpful if they had been furnished,
as they were not organized into a manual and indexed as to contents.
The lack of directives was a serious obstacle to the adoption of effective
expansion procedures.

Some critics of the Navy Department's administration of civilian personnel
during the war allege a second serious obstacle to effective expansion.
They speak of the inexperience and ineptitude of the line officer Commandants
of Navy Yards and Commanders of other activities in handling
labor-management problems as a serious handicap to effective civilian
personnel administration. It is true that during World War II, line officers
exercised these functions and had the last word in passing on labor-management
matters in the field, subject of course always to review by
higher authority.

labor-management, relations were better qualified than naval officers for
such work. Actually, even at the outbreak of World War II, no line officer
of flag rank was completely lacking in experience in dealing with civilian
personnel, and many had had considerable experience along such lines.
Nevertheless, there is a difference in the point of view of the career naval
officer and the civilian specialist, which should not be overlooked, in their
respective approaches to labor-management disputes and other similar problems.

Briefly, the career naval officer views the work of the naval shore
establishments as a public service having for its objective the creation and
support of the operating forces of the Navy in the defense of the

--889--

country. He considers that the interests of the entire nation are involved in
the quality and output of the Navy's shore establishments. The point of
view is part of his concept of duty and loyalty as a dedicated public
servant. On the other han d, the labor-management relations expert, fresh
from civilian life, has had to give consideration on the management side
only to the interests of the owners of the enterprise, at the most, the
interests of a few hundred thousand stockholders in the case of the largest
private companies. The specialist from civilian life, when employed in
the Navy Department or in the field, therefore, always needed a period
of indoctrination to acquaint him with the career naval officer's point of
view and concept of his job in labor-management matters.

In the naval officer's concept there were, of course, included the fullest
regard for the human and social rights of labor, safe and sanitary working
conditions, assistance in getting to and from work, and a myriad of
other factors that contribute to the contentment of the working forces.
Career naval officers were, for example, pioneers in the movement for safer
working conditions for all employees.5

As the war progressed, civilian personnel specialists were employed in
considerable numbers in the Navy Department and in the shore establishment,
many of them as Reserve Officers.6
Those employed in the Navy
Department cam form the upper level of the profession in civilian life,
but that did not insure unanimity of professional opinion among them.

In fact, one of the obstacles encountered by the Navy Department was
the difference in opinion among civilian personnel specialists themselves,
when called on to help develop effective Navy Department policies and
procedures. These differences related to fundamental issues such as responsibility
for the formulation, interpretation, and application of policies; the
degree of central review of policy; and what controls constitute

--890--

unreasonable interference with the responsibility of local management. Generally,
civilians advocated a degree of central authority beyond that implied in
the naval tradition that the top-level command tells subordinate echelons
only what to accomplish, not how to do it. The differences underlined
the fact that labor-management relations cannot be reduced to an exact
science even though Frederick W. Taylor and his associates in the early
part of the 20th Century revolutionized the thinking on the subject by
advocating "Scientific Management" as the answer to labor-management problems.

One of the greatest obstacles to the standardization of policies and
practices was the continuous reorganization and warring between the
emergency agencies created to regulate and coordinate the nation's war
production and civilian manpower problems. The tremendous competition
for the limited industrial manpower available lay at the bottom of the
struggle. The agencies constantly questioned the Navy's expressed needs,
and often issued conflicting recommendations with little consideration for
actual conditions. The Navy's splendid working relations with the Civil
Service Commission in Washington and at the regional level in the field
were heartening exceptions to this rule, and were due mainly to the broadmindedness
of Civil Service Commissioner, Arthur S. Flemming, and to his
willingness to introduce flexibility into Civil Service policies and practices
to meet war emergency situations. He was adept in finding solution s to
knotty problems and tireless in striving for better mutual understanding
of special problems and of the routine relationships between Civil Service
and the Navy. He was a Civil Service Commissioner from July 1939 to
August 1948. But his influence in Civilian Personnel matters extended
beyond Civil Service, as he was also a member of the
War Manpower
Commission from 1942 to 1945, as well as of the Navy Department Manpower
Survey Board in 1943 and 1944.

Administrative Responsibilities

Every bureau and office in the Navy Department and every shore
activity in the field employed some civilians. In the case of most of them,
many more civilians were on the rolls than personnel in uniform. As a
consequence, all bureaus shared in the responsibility for the administration
of civilian personnel. But, what was everybody's business in overall
administration was nobody's specific responsibility.

As already mentioned, ten functions comprised the duties assigned to
the Navy Yard Division by the General Order establishing the division,
later called the Shore Establishment Division, but only one mentioned
civilian personnel. The Shore Establishment Division did not reliever the

--891--

bureaus of their responsibilities for carrying out their missions. They were
responsible for performing the work assigned to them by law, regulations,
and custom, and needed civilian personnel for doing the work. Moreover,
they paid the wages and salaries of civilian personnel from appropriations
under their cognizance.

The Chief of Naval Operations felt that he also should have some
authority in this connection because he was responsible for the readiness
of the operating forces for war. He was furthermore involved in the matter
because the commandants of the Naval Districts reported to him and
they were charged with the military command, and up almost to the end
of the war, with the management control of the industrial shore establishments
in their districts.

Thus there were many officers in the Navy Department that had responsibilities
connected with civilian personnel, but there was no single
office that exercised general supervision and control over this large sector
of the Navy Department's administrative activities. The Assistant Secretary
provided coordination of a sort by requiring all appointments and
promotions of white collar workers in both the Navy Department and the
shore establishments to clear through the Chief Clerk's organization, but
this was, in many ways, a handicap rather than a help to good administration.
No white collar worker in the Navy Department or in the field
could be added to the rolls or have his classification changed without
the express authority of the Secretary's Office. his policy did, however,
prevent shore establishments doing similar work in different parts of the
country from getting out of line completely as to grades and numbers of
white collar personnel employed. But it slowed down the expansion of
these forces when the need arose, and contributed nothing toward establishing
helpful policies for dealing with civilian personnel problems in
general. Such improvements as were made were usually initiated in the bureaus.

Oddly enough, in the employment and change in status of blue collar
workers, the shore establishments had a completely free hand. The numbers
and trades employed were left to each activity. Increases and reductions
in force were made on the basis of the work load on hand and the
availability of funds for doing the work.

Other departments of the Federal Government were presumably also
suffering from unsatisfactory personnel administration. This resulted in
the issuance by the President of
Executive
Order No. 7916 of June 24, 1938.
It stipulated under Section 6 that "The HEads of the Executive Departments
... shall establish in their respective department ... a Division
of Personnel Supervision and Management, at the head of which shall be
appointed a Director of Personnel, qualified by training and experience ...

--892--

for such appointment." The order went into considerable detail with regard
to the functions of the office, and its relationships with the Civil
Service Commission. In conformity with the order, the Division of Personnel
Supervision and Management (PS&M) was established by the
Secretary of the Navy on December 6, 1938, with Mr. Charles Piozet, an
employee with many years of experience in dealing with personnel matters
in the Navy Department, as Director of Personnel.

The establishment of PS&M did not, however, provide solutions for
most of the Navy Department's personnel problems. In the survey of
Navy Department organization made for Secretary Knox by the management
consultant firm of Booz, Fry, Allen and Hamilton in their report
of August 15, 1941, the Office of PS&M came in for sharp criticism.

The adverse comments were introduced by the following observations:
"We have had ore criticism by the bureaus of the Central Personnel
Division than of any other factor in the entire Department. Some of this
comment is, of course, unjustified. But the distrust and derogatory comment
regarding this Division is not entirely without foundation. We believe
that the Department has a long way to go before it will have a
Personnel Division of which it can be proud. ... Mr. Piozet is a master
diplomat and has a ready answer for every person and situation. He cooperates
orally very well, but his cooperation resolves itself into action
very slowly. While he, himself, gives the casual observers a feeling that
the Personnel Division is streamlined and operating smoothly, this is not
true when you get past him into his immediate staff. The unsatisfactory
weak personnel with which he has surrounded himself is a reflection on
Mr. Piozet."

Early in 1940, during the last months of the term of Charles Edison
as Secretary of the Navy, he attempted to strengthen the powers of the
Shore Establishments Division, which shared responsibility with PS&M
for the administration of civilian personnel. He proposed to Congress a
redistribution of duties in the Navy Department with a view to placing
the administration of the shore establishment and the supervision of
civilian personnel under an Office of Shore Activities, to be headed by a
naval officer with the rank of Vice Admiral. The concept behind the proposed
plan was to place the producer logistics and other non-military
functions of the Navy Department under a Chief having authority in
such matters, similar to those of the Chief of Naval Operations for the
operation of the Fleet and the preparation and readiness of plans for its
use in war.

The hearings before the House Naval Affairs Committee on the proposed
law brought out testimony from the Director of SOSED, Captain
C.W. Fisher, USN (later Rear Admiral), giving his concept of the

--893--

functions of SOSED and PS&M.7
Captain Fisher was an officer of the Construction
Corps of the Navy with long experience in civilian personnel management.

In the matter of civilian personnel, Captain Fisher stated that SOSED
"exercised departmental supervision" over white collar employees of Group
IVb in collaboration with the Director of Personnel." He stated also that
"another function of the Shore Establishment Division is usually described
as labor relations. It is in constant touch all the time with complaints,
recommendations, and remarks of labor unions and the individual employees
in the various field establishments." All matters relating to civilian
employees, involving retirements, re-rating, transfers, travel, interpretation
of leave laws, sick leave laws, and etc., came under the cognizance of
SOSED. In general, however, the role of that office was advisory,
especially in regard to labor management matters; and the views of that
office might or might not be adopted in the field by individual Commanding
Officers. Captain Fisher stressed the importance of granting
statutory authority to SOSED for the performance of its functions. However,
the reorganization proposed by Charles Edison was not acted upon
favorably. The inference can be drawn from questions asked by its members
that the Naval Affairs Committee believed SOSED to have adequate
authority to carry out its mission.

Not having succeeded in interesting Congress in an Office of Shore
Activities, Charles Edison, a few months later, urged the addition of an
Under Secretary of the Navy to the civilian hierarchy of the Navy Department,
to specialize on the procurement and production of war material.
The position was authorized by Congress, but did not change the situation
with respect to civilian personnel administration, as the Assistant
Secretary of the Navy retained responsibility for that function.

War Plans

SOSED, as described in some detail in the chapter on the
"Shore Establishment,"
had extensive responsibilities for the development and
improvement of exiting shore establishments and the creation of additional
stations and facilities considered necessary to carry out the Navy's

mission. The last mentioned of the ten SOSED functions listed in General
Order No. 13, mentioned above, was "coordinating the above activities
and functions with War Plans ad Fleet Operating Schedules."

To carry out this directive, Section SOSED-7, as shown on Figure 34,
dated 1 July 1941, was established to assist CNO, Op-30 (Office of
Naval Districts), in making the plans. The basic plan, after being carried
to a certain point, was then turned back to SOSED by Op-30 for the
preparation of more detailed instructions.

An over-all Civilian Personnel War Plan was approved in 1939, but
did not define the respective responsibilities of SOSED, the Bureaus, the
District Commandants, and Commanding Officers in the field, for implementation
of the plan. But it did require the Naval District organizations
to develop local plans, based on the departmental plan.

District Civilian Personnel Officers (DCPO) were added to the Naval
District organizations to assist Commandants in carrying out the War
Plans, among other duties. The Department War Plan required the naval
districts to supply SOSED with estimates of their civilian personnel needs
in the event of war. One of the duties of the DCPO's was to gather and
to summarize the estimates for transmission to SOSED. Other duties
involved the planning of employee welfare, transportation, housing, and
draft deferments. The tasks were stated in the War Plan, but not how to
perform them. THeir performance required improvisation at the field level.
Steps were taken to initiate a program for vocational training in Navy
Yards, which will be discussed below under Training Programs for the
draft deferment of skilled employees and for recruitment were outlined,
but required further elaboration. No War Plan could, however, foresee
the nature of the many new Federal, State, and Local War Agencies that
were created to deal with war manpower problems, nor foresee the need
for such instruments of control as Production Urgency and Labor Priorities Committees.

ALthough the War Plan placed upon SOSED responsibility for its implementation,
no directives had been issued to the District Civilian Personnel
Offices (DCPO) with reference thereto before the attack on Pearl
Harbor. Instructions given to them were limited to those found in the
War Plan. The DCPO's, therefore, had to develop their own programs
and methods of operation.

The Shore Establishments Division also maintained, under the designation
SOSED-4, an office charged with the administration of the civilian
personnel of the Navy Department and field services in all matters pertaining
to carrying out the rules and regulation of the Civil Service Commission.
In doing this, its functions were to include recruiting, placement,
classification, efficiency rating, employee relations, training and statistics.

--896--

This section was headed by a civilian, Mr. Charles Piozet, already mentioned
as the Director of Personnel who headed the division of PS&M,
and, as such, came directly under the Assistant Secretary. Thus, his relations
with Rear Admiral Fisher, Director of Shore Establishments, were actually
coordinate rather than subordinate as the head of a division in SOSED.

Section SOSED-1A dealt with labor relations, liaison with the Department
of Labor, matters pertaining to labor unions, strikes and controversies,
labor legislation and policies, and training at Navy yards and private
plants.8

As the threat of war increased, the dividing zone in SOSED between
advisory functions and responsibility for administrative supervision, became
narrower. Despite DOSED's contention that it both supervised civilian
personnel activities and collaborated with the Division of Personnel SUpervision
and Management in civilian personnel administration in the Department
as well as the field, its major efforts in these respects concerned the
field, especially the Navy Yards. In actual practice, most of the responsibility
for white collar civilian personnel administration rested with PS&M.

By 1943, it was apparent that SOSED was losing its struggle for a
larger part n the administration of the shore establishments. On 15
March 1943, Admiral King, Cominch-CNO, wrote to Admiral Fisher, stating
his belief that the title Director of Shore Establishments should be
changed to include Industrial Relations, and thus more properly reflect
that the functions of the SHore Establishments Division be transferred to
Op-39, Office of Naval Districts; but the transfer was not approved. In
the meantime, bureau pressure on the Assistant Secretary of the Navy to
improve the handling of civilian personnel increased steadily.

Division of Personnel Supervision and Management (PS&M)

A further look at the Division of Personnel Supervision and Management
is in order. When this Division was established, the advantages of
placing it within the Shore Establishments Division, rather than making
it a separate part of the Assistant Secretary's Office, were discussed, but
this would not have complied literally with the Executive Order No. 7916.

Originally, the Director of PS&M advocated centralized personnel control
as opposed to decentralization to the bureaus, because he considered
the bureaus inadequately staffed, also because decentralization would have
caused dispersal of records and duplication of effort. By 1941, PS&M was
maintaining records on all Group IVb civilian employees in the Navy

--897--

Department, and processed all personnel transactions, appointments, promotions,
transfers, separations, and efficiency ratings. Some of these functions
were duplicated in the Shore Establishments Division, but joint
meetings of the personnel of corresponding sections in the two Divisions
provided for collaboration and agreement on policies. About the only clear
demarcation between the two Divisions was that PS&M had nothing to
do with safety engineering, and SOSED had nothing to do with white
collar position classification in the Navy Department itself.

As the work in the Navy Department expanded during the period of
emergency immediately preceding the war, the bureaus became more and
more impatient of the delays in the PS&M and began dealing directly
with the Civil Service Commission in matters of recruitment, and also
attempted to by-pass PS&M in classification matters. PS&M sanctioned
some decentralization early in 1942, but there was no uniformity in this
regard as between bureaus.

On October 5, 1942, Lieutenant Commander Samuel H. Ordway, Jr.,
USNR (later Captain), previously mentioned, began a survey of the
Division of Personnel SUpervision and Management, and in his first
report stress four points:

1. The Assistant Secretary of the Navy was ultimately responsible for
establishing a sound personnel program.

2. Bureau understanding and participation was required.

3. PS&M was not organized and staffed to meet wartime needs.

4. Field stations were not organized and staffed properly to carry out
their personnel tasks.

The report made nineteen specific recommendations for improving
PS&M's operation. Assistant Secretary Ralph A Bard took immediate
steps to put many of these into effect, particularly in the area of bureau
relationships with PS&ap;M. A Departmental Personnel Council of Bureau
Civilian Personnel Officers was established in February of 1943, and the
development of Bureau Personnel Offices was stressed.

Although improvements were made in the operation of PS&M, it was
evident that a merger of that DIvision with SOSED was essential if the
Navy Department' administration of civilian personnel was to be placed
on a sound basis. Butt the two offices limped along separately for another
ten months.

Division of Shore Establishments and Civilian Personnel (SECP)

In September 1943, the Assistant Secretary ordered a Committee to
study the subject. The Committee recommended the merger of SOSED
and PS&M to form a Division of Shore Establishments and Civilian

--898--

Personnel (SECP). The new Division was established under date of January
20, 1944, with Rear Admiral Frederick G. Crisp, USN, as its Director,
and Captain Emmett Sprung, USN, as his principal assistant. Both were
career officers of the former Construction Corps, with long Navy Yard
experience in handling civilian personnel.

In order to give Rear Admiral Crisp a free hand, the Assistant Secretary
assigned Rear Admiral Fisher and Mr. Charles Piozet, the former
heads of SOSED and PS&M, respectively, to other duty. An important
position was vacant on the Navy Manpower Survey Board, of which Vice
Admiral Adolphus Andrews, USN, was the senior member. Fisher was
assigned to fill the vacancy. The Board undertook a survey of the military
and civilian personnel situation of the whole Naval Establishment,
with a view to determining whether more effective use could be made of
available manpower.

Mr. Piozet was appointed "Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary
and Adviser on Civilian Personnel Administration." His duties included
liaison with Congress and Budget authorities. He also served as the Navy
Department representative on various committees dealing with manpower
and civilian personnel problems.

After a survey of the existing organizations and the task that lay ahead,
Rear Admiral Crisp set up, under date of February 10, 1944, the tentative
organization shown on Fig. 35.
Most of the personnel of the two former
offices were retained, and redistributed to the new organization, but additional
specialists were recruited from time to time as necessary, to fill the
needs of the new office. any came from civilian life and were commissioned
in the Naval Reserve. Crisp decided immediately that the SECP
would be an out-and-out policy-forming and advisory staff office and that
operating responsibility would be left in the bureaus and the shore activities.

One of the first and most important tasks undertaken by the new office
was the collection, indexing, and reissuance, in a single volume, of about
3000 instructions still applicable to the current civilian personnel
situation.9
There was great need for such a manual, as some 8000 uncodified,
unindexed pieces of correspondence on civilian personnel matters had been
issued going back to about 1910. New activities were especially in need
of such a manual. This resulted eventually in the preparation and circulation
of "Navy Civilian Personnel Instructions" to all activities in the
Naval Establishment employing civilian personnel.

decentralizing the employment of civilian white collar workers along lines such
that there was practically no more delay in employing a needed individual
in the field in this category than there was in employing a blue collar worker.

The Bureaus and Civilian Personnel before SECP

When PS&M was originally established, no clear-cut statement of its
functions and authority was issued to the naval service, but, under date
of May 16, 1939, its Director stated "The administration of civilian personnel
of the Navy Department ... is centralized in PS&M. There are
no separate sections in the bureaus and offices of the Department to handle
specifically personnel matters, such matters being handled by the personnel
of the various Chief Clerks' offices in addition to their other duties. ...
All personnel actions affecting employees in the departmental service ...
whose positions are under classification ... are taken in
PS&M."10
This statement was not helpful to the bureaus in planning personnel expansion.
The organization and procedures followed by the respective bureaus in
such matters are described in the several chapters covering their histories,
but will be reviewed briefly in this place.

In the case of the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, in 1939 civilian
personnel came under the Paymaster General's Civilian Assistant, whose
functions were merged with those of the Chief Clerk in July 1941. In
1939, the Bureau's entire civilian personnel consisted of about 600 people,
of whom 61 ere engaged on personnel employment and management
work. By the end of 1941, the numbers had risen to 309 on the latter
work, with a total of 1,727 on the bureau payroll. The total number rose
rapidly, reaching 4,000 eventually, but PS&M would not authorize an increase
in the numbers engaged pn civilian personnel staff work. BuSandA
thereupon appointed Reserve Officers with experience and training in
personnel administration to fill its needs.

The Chief Clerk of the Bureau of Ordnance was responsible for civilian
personnel employment and management in the Bureau. In the fall of
1940, the work was segregated under a newly created Civilian Personnel
Section headed by the Chief Clerk. This section was eventually transferred
from the Chief Clerk's Office to the Administrative Division. Beginning
in 1942, much of the responsibility for civilian personnel matters was
placed under the various division and section heads, thus further decentralizing
these functions.

In the Bureau of Ships, civilian personnel administration was handled
during the short-of-war period, as in former times, by the Chief Clerk, and

--901--

by the Chief Draftsman; but, in 1941, when the Booz Management Survey
pointed out wherein the current procedures were a bottleneck, a Reserve
Officer with personnel management experience was appointed to head a
new Civilian Personnel Section. From June 1940 to June 1945, civilian
personnel employed in BuShips increased from 990 to 3,810, while those
engaged on civilian personnel procurement and management in the Bureau
itself rose from 25 to 96. The Bureau of Ships was one of the first to
receive authority from PS&M to handle the employment, classification, and
management of such personnel; this largely because the work was being
done with a minimum of overhead and with marked efficiency. However,
many of the technical positions in the Bureau were being filled by specially
qualified and selected Reserve Officers.

The Bureau of Aeronautics Civilian Personnel Procurement Office consisted,
through 1940, of three clerks in the Chief CLerk's Office, supplemented
by policy-making boards dealing with such matters, the most noteworthy
being the Civilian Personnel Board. Plans for reorganizing the
Chief CLerk's Office were undertaken in May 1941, as a result of Booz
Survey recommendations. This marked the beginning of BuAer's centralized
personnel procedures. That Bureau also filled most of its technical positions
with specially selected Reserver Officers.

Civilian personnel was handled similarly in the other bureaus. All were
eventually given permission by PS&M to deal directly with the Civil Service
Commission and to take charge when the need arose of their own recruiting
and selection programs. However, by April 1942, expansion of
civilian personnel in the Bureaus seemed to be getting out of hand, with
the result that Assistant Secretary of the Navy Bard stopped all additions
to such forces in the bureaus for 75 days, after which increases were again permitted.

As bureau personnel offices became more adept and better staffed to
perform their functions, further delegation of authority was put into effect
and additional mechanisms were set up to handle specific problems. Such
were the establishment of the Employees Counseling Program on January
19, 1943; the Bureau Council for Personnel Administration on February
17, 1943; partial decentralization of classification authority to the Bureaus
on September 1, 1943; and authority to classify all Group IVb personnel
(white collar, classified civilians) on January 5, 1944; decentralization of
Field Personnel Jackets on March 11, 1944; delegation of placement authority
on April 5, 1944; the formal establishment of Bureau Civilian
Personnel Offices (long after most were established) on June 16, 1944.

The above was broadly the situation inherited by Rear Admiral Crisp
when SECP was established on January 20, 1044.

Departmental Services Unit

With the adoption of the tentative SECP organization on February 10, 1944, shown on
Figure 35,
the policy-making and personnel processing
tasks were distributed among five functional branches of the SECP.
These were headed by former SOSED section heads, accustomed to dealing
with field activities. They urged setting up a special group with appropriate
sections to handle the administration of departmental civilian
personnel, as distinguished form the personnel in the field, as their problems
were usually quite different.

Pursuant to a SECP letter of July 14, 1944, a group of ten sections,
known as the Departmental Services Unit, was established on August 1,
1944. A chart dated June 7, 1945, on file in the Navy Department but
not reproduced in this work, gives the details of the functions of this
group. However, the organization of the group is given on
Figure 36 of
the same date. While the sections dealt mostly with departmental personnel
problems, such as recruitment, training, counselling, selection and
assignments, allocations, records and recreation, it had a section also for
liaison with Selective Service and for handling occupational deferments of
personnel in the field.

The unit immediately brought about a great improvement in inter-bureau
and Bureau-SECP relations. However, as soon as the bureaus achieved
virtual autonomy in their civilian personnel operations, they resisted
guidance from the central office. In order to give it more authority,
the Departmental Services Unit was transferred to the Administrative Office
of EXOS on September 1, 1945.

Expansion and Ceilings

Early in 1943, the Bureau of the Budget, under authority of Public
Law 821, 77th Congress, limited the Navy's white-collar force to 19,400
in Washington, and 125,000 in the field. Fearing that this would be too
small a number to fill the Navy's ever-growing needs, Congress was persuaded
to pass the white-collar War Overtime Pay Act of 1943 (Public
Law 49), authorizing, for the first time, overtime pay for IVb per annum
employees. But to guard against abuses, Congress gave to the Bureau of
the Budget drastic control over the size of such forces and overtime that
could be paid.

The ceiling program for the Navy was, at first, administered in PS&M,
but had to be delegated to the bureaus when the reporting machinery
of PS&M, needed to send quarterly estimates to the Bureau of the Budget,
proved inadequate. However, decentralization of the ceiling program to

--904--

the bureaus, also proved unsatisfactory, and it was turned over to the
Employment Branch of SOSED late in 1943.

At times in 1944, the Navy Department faced the loss of power to
pay overtime as it appeared in danger of exceeding its ceilings. Improved
record-keeping and reporting procedures overcame this threat. With increased
proficiency of Bureau Personnel Officers, and in line with the
Division of Shore Establishments and Civilian Personnel's decentralization
policy, ceiling controls for individual above activities were again returned
to the bureaus. The SECP decided which bureaus had the predominant
interest in the respective activities, and assigned responsibility for civilian
personnel complements to that bureau.

There was no law similar to Public Law 49 to regulate the size of
the blue collar working forces in the Navy's industrial shore establishments.
Wages of such employees were already based on the wages paid
in private industry in the vicinity, as required by the law of 1862 previously
mentioned. In 1943, Congress, the Bureau of the Budget, the War
Manpower Commission, and the Navy Department became concerned over
allegations that manpower was being wasted in the Navy's shore activities.
This led to the labor utilization studies, referred to later in this chapter.

The SOSED recognized in this connection the importance of making
estimates of anticipated future needs for civilian personnel at Navy Yards
and stations in order to plan realistic recruitment and training programs.
In the absence of precise knowledge of future work loads, the Employment
Branch of SECP, the successor of SOSED, made such estimates,
based on information received from the DCPO's. The Civil Service Commission
and the War Manpower Commission were furnished the estimates
for use in planning inter-regional recruitment programs. The Navy Department
took the preparation of these estimates very seriously so as to
be able to stand behind them in order to avoid time-consuming labor
utilization surveys. Beginning March 12, 1945, to insure uniformity, all
shore activities anticipating increases in working forces had to request
them through the Under Secretary of the Navy, via the cognizant Bureau
and SECP. This procedure remained in effect until the end of the war.

DCPO's in Naval District Organizations

As already mentioned, the War Plan, approve din 1939, placed the
responsibility for the preparation of civilian personnel procurement and
training programs in SOSED, but did not go into the details of the relationships
that would have to be developed between SOSED, the bureaus,
and the District Commandants, in order to carry out the programs

--905--

effectively. Provision was, however, made in the plan for the addition of a
District Civilian Personnel Officer (DCPO) to the Commandant's staff, to
work out the implementation and operation of the plant at the naval
district level.

The Navy Regulations (Articles 1481-1485 of the 1920 edition, with
changes up to date) were explicit as to the Commandant's responsibility
and complete authority in all matters affecting district activities, and that
he was the direct representative of the Navy Department, including its
bureaus and offices. But the Regulations provided also that he was not
to interfere with the management of the establishments in his district
having commanding officers, unless unusual circumstances made this necessary,
nor was he to be responsible for the technical work being done by
any of the various organizations. These were Navy policies of long standing
and made it difficult at first for the newly created DCPO functions
to obtain a foothold and to render the services contemplated for the
position. Some commanding officers of shore activities did not welcome
what they considered to be unnecessary intrusions into their management
responsibilities and authority by a member of the Commandant's Staff.
Depending in a large measure on personalities, some DCPO's therefore
had difficulty in obtaining information about civilian personnel needs and
practices in the several activities. DCPO's sometimes had first to inform
commanding officers of shore stations of their existence, and then had to
convince them that they had something of value to contribute to the
solution of personnel problems.

One of their early important contributions was in the field of deferment
of Navy employees from the draft. Letters prepared by the DCPO's
informed naval activities in the District how records should be kept and
how deferment forms should be filled out. DCPO's provided this same
service to Navy contractors in the District. The first of these DCPO's
letters of advice elicited little response form the recipients, but as the
draft began to take its toll, DCPO's began to receive requests for assistance
in making out cases for individual deferments.

On September 22, 1942, the Shore Establishments Division issued its
first directive for District Civilian Personnel Officers; subject: "Field
Organization for Industrial Manpower." Sn Industrial Manpower Section
had been set up in SOSED to deal with the DCPO's on the handling o f
the personnel problems of naval suppliers. However no section was created
to instruct DCPO's with respect to handling similar problems in the Navy's
own activities. The Division of Personnel SUpervision and Management
did not call upon dCPO's for any services in the field, and the Shore
Establishments Division addressed most of its letters with reference to
personnel in Navy Yards and shore stations directly to their

--906--

Commanding Officers. A letter dated September 26, 1942, from the Chief of Procurement
and Material informed Naval Inspectors that the DCPO was
the official in the District Commandant's organization concerned with
labor supply problems.

Each of the Naval Districts covered a number o States and the need
for larger DCPO staff and for branch offices soon became pressing. As
time went on, many DCPO's found themselves overburdened with work,
but limited in authority for handling the civilian personnel problems
coming up for solution.

Several efforts were made by the Shore Establishments Division to
consolidate all District personnel activities under the direction of the District
Civilian Personnel Officer. After the Division of Shore Establishments
and Civilian Personnel was organized, the consolidation was ordered
on April 6, 1944. District Civilian Personnel Officers became District
Civilian Personnel Directors (DCPD), and all Vocational Training, Labor
Relations, Safety, and Position Classification Officers attached to the District
reported thereafter to the DCPD.

To answer the need for some uniformity in DCPD organization, in
July of 1944, SECP issued "Instructions for Operations to District Civilian
Personnel Directors" that set forth the mission, task, functions, and operational
services of the DCPD. These instructions were issued as a guide,
since DCPD's were not branch offices of SECP, but staff offices of the
Commandants of the respective District. This guide called for decentralization
of the District functions to the branch offices, and for each area to
provide Navy representation on the new decentralized Area Manpower
Priorities Committees.

There was still no office in SECP which had exclusive responsibility
for issuing directives to the DCPD's. This looseness of organization left
the DCPD considerable freedom to develop his own methods of carrying
out the mission in his own way, but it also deprived hi of direction
from a central source of information and authority. As their staffs grew,
management of their own offices became one of the important tasks of
the DCPD's.

District Civilian Personnel Directors also had internal problems involving
their relationship with the Commandants of their Districts. It was
intended that the DCPD act as a staff adviser to the Commandant, but
in some District, the DIstrict Personnel Officer (Military) (DCPO) was
made responsible for th DCPD. However, a SecNav directive of April
6, 1944, provided that the DCPD "shall be subordinate to no other District
staff function but shall be directly responsible to the Chief of Staff
and to the District Commandant."

The final step in the evolution of the DCPD's came in 1945 when

--907--

the Division of Shore Establishments and Civilian Personnel authorized
them, whether invited or not, to visit all naval activities within their
Districts and to survey and submit reports on civilian personnel matters
in each activity.

Personnel Relations Officer (PRO)

The DCPO's served in a staff capacity in the organizations of the
Commandants of the Naval Districts. But some mechanism was needed
in addition in the industrial activities of the shore establishments, such
as the Navy Yards, Ordnance Plants, large supply depots, and etc., to
implement the civilian personnel policies of the Navy Department, as
transmitted through the DCPO's. Early in 1942, Secretary Knox had a
survey made at the Navy Yards, Boston, New York and Puget Sound,
by a firm of personnel management specialists (Industrial Relations Counsellors,
Inc.), to obtain their advice on handling such matters. Pursuant
to recommendations made in their report, the Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, in a letter of September 10, 1942, authorized the assignment of a
Personnel Relations Officer at all of the larger industrial activities of the Navy.

Some Navy Yards took to the idea more quickly than others. The
need was also greater in some places than in others. When SECP was established
in the Navy Department in January 1944, all Navy industrial activities
that did not already have a Personnel Relations Division were
urged to set one up. The typical Personnel Relations Division of the Navy
Yards and other similar establishments consisted of six sections: Labor
Board, Labor Relations Section, Employment Section, Training Section,
Safety Section, Employee Welfare, and Service Section. Under the last
mentioned came such activities as the management of restaurants, recreation
facilities, etc.

Employee Group Relations

Relations with organized employee groups, labor unions, and other
nationwide groups such as veterans' organizations, had been the subject
of much thought over the years in the Navy Department, as well as in
the Navy yards and other shore activities. An organized employee group
is defined as a group of civilian Navy employees who have formed an
organization for consultation with management with a view to promoting
the general welfare of its members. Such groups differ from labor unions,
in that most of their interests and aims are local in character whereas
labor unions, veterans' organizations, brotherhoods, and the like are more
interested in policies and practices that have nationwide application. Many
civilian employees of the Government belong to both types of

--908--

organizations. The handling of the relations with such groups became one of the
important functions of the Division of Personnel Relations, and were of
such importance that they received much personal attention from the
uppermost management echelons.

The labor relations policies of the Navy Department have always
recognized the principle that Navy civilian employees have the right to
join or refrain from joining organized employee groups and labor unions.
The Navy Department holds that communication between management
and employees develops respect and creates good will, that employees express
themselves more freely through organized groups than as individuals,
and that discussion between representatives of the various groups and
Navy management officials is generally of mutual advantage.

Group dealings, as practised by the Navy, is however, no collective
bargaining, as defined and practised in industry. Government employees,
for example, may not participate in strikes or assert the right to strike
against the Government. This principle was finally incorporated in law in
order to curb unreasonable labor union demands.11

Organized employee groups, as well as labor unions, have the right
of personal representation in their dealings with management. If the representatives
themselves are not Navy employees, they are not permitted
access to naval activities during working hours for the purpose of conferring
with individual groups or group leaders. The rule is not, however,
so inelastic as to prevent discussions and getting together of interested parties.

In the interest of decentralization, promoting good relations, and saving
time, all questions concerning working conditions are, whenever possible,
settled at the lowest level of management. With the creation of the
Division of Personnel Relations at Navy Yards and similar activities, such
details and the time of meetings, frequency of meetings, the preparation
of agendas of matters to be discussed, numbers of representatives, etc.,
were made part of the duties of the Personnel Relations Officer and his staff.

Authorization of Employee's Councils by the Navy Department, if
expressly requested by the employees, was another step in making it possible
for employees to bring their points of view, grievances, and objectives
to the attention of management. No employee is, however, denied
the opportunity of choice between Employee's Councils and other forms
of employee representation. Employee's Councils evolved from the earlier
Ship Committees, in the handling of certain aspects of labor-management
relations. Ship Committees, Employee Councils, and similar mechanisms,

--909--

were not popular with the labor unions, because the accomplished many
of the objectives of the unions in private
industry.12

Wages and Salaries

By far the largest number of the Navy's civilian employees are blue
collar workers paid on an hourly basis. Mention has already been made
of the Act of July 16, 1862, whereunder the Secretary of the Navy is required
to fix the wages of Navy Yard employees on the basis of wages
prevailing in private industry in the vicinity. This was the method for
determining wages until 1930, when the law was temporarily suspended
by Congress, largely at the request of organized labor, because wages in
industry, due to the Depression, had fallen below those paid in the naval
shore establishments. By 1940, however, the wages in industry had again
risen to the point where it was thought that they might be higher than
those paid in Navy Yards. The Wage Board procedure was therefore again
put into effect, in accordance with SecNav's letter of January 8, 1940.

The usual Wage Board of Review was convened in the Navy Department
during that summer to review the recommendations made by the
local Wage Board. New schedules of wages were put into effect, based on
the recommendations of the 1940 Wage Board of Review, but the procedure
was again placed in abeyance when the wage-fixing procedure
under the "Shipbuilding Stabilization Committee" was adopted. This did
not, however, solve the question of wages in Ordnance Plants, Air Stations,
and other naval activities employing civilian personnel. The Navy
Department was represented in such matters by the Wage Administration
Section of the Division of Personnel SUpervision and Management,
which made studies of individual wage adjustments found necessary, and
made suitable recommendations to the Secretary of the Navy to cover
individual cases.

The National War Labor board, established on January 12, 1942,
became a factor in the establishment of wages in 1942, but delegated much
of its authority in the case of the shore activities of the Navy to the
Secretary of the Navy, who in turn placed the work under PS&M, as just
mentioned. When the Division of Shore Establishments and Civilian Personnel
was created in January 1944, wage matters were placed under the
Wage Administration and Classification Branch of SECP.

The broad policy envisioned by the Wages Act of 1862 was followed,
wherever possible, but when there were no directly comparable trades

--910--

employed by industry in the vicinity, local commands were called on to
make investigations and submit recommendations as to wages that would
be appropriate. PS&M and later, SECP, from September 1943 to June
1945, authorized wage adjustments for 292 trades and established some
2,950 wage rates. All requested wage adjustments by shore establishments
were first cleared with the cognizant bureau before being put into effect.

Classified Employees. It will be noted from the above that the Navy
Department had practically complete authority during peacetime, and to a
great extent during the war, in fixing the wages of blue collar workers,
but its authority to determine the wages of white collar workers (Group
IVb) much more circumscribed. Until 1884, salary rates for such
positions were fixed for the various kinds of positions in the annual appropriation
acts of Congress. This system prevailed for positions such as
Chief Clerks of the bureaus, until right up to World War II.

In 1910, the Navy Department, for the first time, was given a considerable
voice in determining pay rates for its Group IVb workers. These
salaries were fixed on a single, uniform, nationwide scale, and this system
was not altered when the Classification Act of 1923 established a statutory
system of classes and pay for the government's white collar workers in
Washington. The 1923 Act established definite occupational groupings
designated as "services", and provided for the recognition of "classes" of
positions with a service. The Act also established "grades" within each
class, requiring that all positions of like difficulty within the class be
assigned to the same grade. range of pay rates was provided for each
grade within each class.

Recognizing that precise definitions could not be written into the basic
statute, a central administrative board was provided to draw detailed class
specifications by which the various departments could be guided. This
central agency, the Personnel Classification Board, was also given authority
to review assignments (allocations) of individual positions to their appropriate
classes and grades as made by the various federal agencies, assuring
conformity with central standards.

In 1930, the Brookhart Amendment to the 1923 Classification Act extended
this classification system to the field, and the Navy Department
was required to apply the system to all of its Group IVb employees.

The Navy's first attempt to classify its white collar positions in Washington
was the result of an Executive Order in 1921. When the Classification
Act was passed in 1923, these position descriptions were brought
up to date. In 1924, a Departmental Classification Board was formed to
allocate the Navy's 2500 positions existing in Washington, for final review
by the Personnel Classification Board.

The first effort at field classification occurred in 19278, and the Brookhart
Salary Act of 1930 required systematic field classification.

--911--

In 1932, the Personnel Classification Board's staff and functions were
transferred to the Civil Service Commission as the Personnel Classification Division.

In 1941, the Departmental Classification Board was abolished and a
Classification Section established in the Division of Personnel Supervision
and Management. This section made final classification of Group IVb
positions in the field, and initially classified departmental positions before
submission to the Civil Service Commission for final review and approval.

Standards for Navy positions were hazily defined, and for many, clearly
stated standards were lacking altogether. In October 1942, SecNav ordered
a survey of the Division of Personnel Supervision and Management, including
a specific study of the classification system then in effect at the
departmental and field levels. Navy classifiers were found to be unaggressive
and the field program unrealistic. The survey report recommended
drastic changes in organization and procedure, including a return to centralized
control by the Division of Personnel Supervision and Management
over field classification. This centralization over field classification was
eventually effected, but the bureaus blocked the Division of personnel
Supervision and Management's attempt to centralize departmental classification,
because they lacked confidence in the people who would do the
work. Following the report of the survey, the Navy's classifiers developed
a faster, more accurate, and on-the-spot classification program in the field.
On 22 September 1943, Assistant Secretary Bard approved the establishment
of five regional and twenty field offices (actually no regional offices
and but 10 field offices were created) to direct the decentralized field
classification program under the control of the Division of Personnel
Supervision and Management.

In August 1944, field and departmental classification were separated;
responsibility for the latter was transferred to the Departmental Services
Unit of the Division of SECP, as already mentioned, while the Wage and
Classification Branch of SECP handled the field program. Although other
section s of SECP were to function in an advisory capacity, classification
was on operating undertaking which sent its own classifiers into the field;
their allocations of field positions were mandatory and final. The field program
was characterized by uniform central control and direction throughout
the rest of the war, while departmental classification control remained
hazy, with each Bureau developing its own procedures and dealing directly
with the Civil Service Commission. However, bureau classifiers were
eventually required to pas qualifying tests and be certified by Departmental
Services before they could take authoritative action.

A final change in the field program took place on 6 April 1944 when
SecNav directed that all functions and officers of the Division of Shore

--912--

Establishments and Civilian Personnel's 19 Position Field Classification
Offices be transferred to the cognizance of the District Civilian Personnel
Director (DCPD) in the Naval District in which located. The Position
Field Classification Officer (PFCO) was still responsible to the Wage
and Classification Branch of SECP, for carrying out classification policy
and allocation of positions, but for purposes of laying out their work programs
and for military discipline, the PFCO's were responsible to the DCPD's.

In summary, it can be said that the Navy's field classification was
brought from a chaotic state in 1942 to an effective tool of personnel
management by the end of the war.

Recruitment

One of the most difficult factors in recruiting civilian manpower for
the Navy in wartime is the problem of obtaining even reasonably accurate
estimates of the number of persons possessing various skills that may be
needed at any given time. Work loads involved in repairing
battle damage
are not foreseeable. The amount and kind of war production that may be
called for is also subject to change without much notice The best source
of information as to probable requirements was the Office of the Chief of
Naval Operations, but there, also, the estiamtes ahd to be largely guesses.

On the shole, the estimates, early in the war, oif manpower needed,
made by the Shore Establishments themselves, as correlated by the DCPO's
and by the bureaus, were iunder, rather than over, what proved necessary.
War plans generally underestimated the labor shortage that would develop
and the extent of the expansion that would be found necessary.

The Navy started its expansion period earlh in 1940 with a total of
some 125,000 civilians employed at all stations. Art the peak of employment
in August 1945, the total number on board in the Department of
the Navy was over 750,000. The total number hired during that period
approximated two million.

The Civil Service Commission was also unprepared, and it was apparent
at the outset that the Commission would not long be able to supply
the workers needed by following peacetime procedures. The Commission
was forced to propose a special program, resulting in Executive Orders No. 9063
and 9067
(20 Feb 1942), which suspendded permanent
Civil Service apointments for the duration and permitted the
Commission to issue War Service Regulations calling for temporary appointments
to positions in the public service limited to the duration of
the war and six months thereafter. Under these regulations, the

--913--

Commission was authorized to suspend its standards and to accept the best talent
available regardless of qualifications.

Navy liaison with the Civil Service Commission was generally most
satisfactory except when central recruitment under the Division of Personnel
Supervision and Management proved unworkable and each bureau
sought its own contact with the Commission. Gradually, as the Division
of Personnel Supervision and Management decentralized authority to the
bureaus, the conducted special recruitment programs of their own under
War Service Regulations, which were issued on 30 March 1942 by the
Civil Service Commission. By June 1942, the bureau had expanded their
recruiting staffs and were getting good results.

Most of the mechanical workers and unskilled labor required by the
Navy's shore establishments had for years been employed through the
Labor Boards, whose operations were broadly supervised by the Civil Service
Commission. There was a Labor Board at every Navy Yard, Naval
Ordnance plant, ad at some of the supply depots. The Boards also
served all smaller naval activities within their geographical area.

The Civil Service Commission and the War Manpower Commission
approved inter-regional recruiting for shore activities when sufficient applicants
could not be obtained by local recruitment. Mare Island was the
first Navy Yard to undertake a recruiting campaign outside of the West
Coast region, and the program was reasonably successful, prompting other
Yards to follow suit. This recruiting was conducted with clearance from
the War Manpower Commission Regional Directors and the Civil Service
Commission District Officers. The total number of recruiters at the peak
of the program in 1945 exceeded 200. The total number recruited during
1944 and 1945 was 106,593.

Until September 22, 1942, no one office in the Navy Department had
the specific responsibility for handling the deferment from Selective Service
of vital civilian employees of the Naval Establishment. The Bureau of
Naval Personnel assigned an officer as the Secretary's representative at
Selective Service Headquarters to protect the Navy's voluntary recruitment
program from absorption by Selective Service. When the Navy was forced
to accept draftees, it became the business of the Navy representative to
see that the Navy received its quota of acceptable men. In addition, a
naval officer was assigned to the staff of each State Director of Selective
Service to provide informational liaison, but his duties did not cover the
deferment of civilian personnel employed by the Navy.

The District Civilian Personnel Officers were among the first to feel

--914--

the need for clear cut statements on the Navy Department's deferment
policies. This led to the setting up, in September 1942, in SOSED, of a
Selective Service Section, which provided a much needed central office for
handling all deferment matters.

The Selective Service system was, from the beginning, administered by
Army Officers on a fully decentralized basis. Local boards made the decisions
on the induction of individual registrants. On November 1, 1941,
Selective Service headquarters issued to local boards, as a guide for deciding
on deferments, a list of key occupations that would be difficult to replace.

In February 1942, the President appointed a special committee to study
and recommend a uniform policy for deferments. It was decided that only
heads of certain departments and agencies could request deferments for
government workers. The Secretary of the Navy delegated his authority
to request deferments to Chiefs of Bureaus, to heads of other offices in
the Navy Department, to the Commandants of Naval Districts and to
Commanding Officers of certain shore stations.

In July, 1942, the War Manpower Commission established a Committee
on Essential Activities and Occupations, which was to prepare a list of
shortage areas requiring preferential consideration for deferments. This list
also served as a guide to local boards. The head of SOSED's Selective
Service Section became the Navy's representative on the Essential Activities
Committee. On September 24, 1942, this section became the official
liaison between the Navy and Selective Service headquarters in all matters
of deferment policy and worked out the details of the Navy's several
deferment programs.

The first major innovation in the deferment program came in the fall
of 1942, when the War Manpower Commission announced a "Manning
Table and Replacement Schedule" program by which producers could
negotiate a schedule for orderly inductions with State Directors of Selective
Service. This replacement schedule procedure was later adopted by all
naval shore activities. The District Civilian Personnel Officer did the negotiating.
The system proved highly satisfactory.

On March 13, 9143, SecNav created the Navy Committee on Deferment
of Government Employees.

Induction of skilled workers began to slow down the production of
certain plants engage din vital war work. The Navy arranged to have
skilled workers released from the Army for periods up to six months when
justifiable, to help solve this problem. The Navy Deferment Program continued
despite strong Congressional criticism that the Navy Department
was a haven for draft-dodgers. To meet this charge, the Assistant Secretary,
on October 20, 1943, established an elaborate reporting system

--915--

pursuant to the findings of a Presidential group. The system required listing
the names, occupations, and local boards of all employees for whom deferments
had been requested. As a result of this list, all employees who
had been deferred without request were inducted. This reporting system
eliminated a great deal of the criticism.

The end of the Selective Service deferment road was reached on February
19, 1945, when a new plan placed into effect to draft 70 percent
of the fit young men still deferred. Since only 30 percent of draft
eligibles could be retained by industry, and since all were occupationally
vital to production, it made no difference now to Selective Service which
70 percent were taken and which 30 percent deferred. By August 1, 1945,
the deferment percentage was reduced to 15 percent.

Training

As a result of the steps taken in 1940 and 1942 to put civilian training
at Navy Yards and stations in full operation, thirty-seven vocational
training instructors were available when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Training
programs had already been started at most of the Navy Yards and
Naval Air Stations and in some other activities.

In December, 1941, the number of civilian employees in the eight continental
Navy Yards was approximately 150,000. This represented an increase
of about 100 percent in two years. Twenty-eight thousand Navy
Yard employees were in training at this time. During the eighteen months
ending July 1, 1942, about 100,000 civilians employed by naval activities
started training, and about 80 percent completed their training.

Apprentice trining was continued during the war despite difficulties in
operating Navy yard apprentice schools. The number of apprentices gradually
increased to approximately ten thousand in 1943.

Trade training was completed by 133,989 from January 1, 1941 to
June 30, 1943; instructor training was completed by 7,364 for the same
period; supervisor training in the same period reached 12,098 men; other
training programs for clerical, technical and scientific workers and inspectors,
were also successfully undertaken.

These training programs were sponsored and generally developed by
the PS&M Training Division; later by the Civilian Personnel Training
Branch of SOSED.

During 1944 and 1945, the principal project undertaken by the SECP's
Training Branch was development of Work Improvement Program at the
Navy Yards. This required participation by all workers who wished to
advance. The purpose was to increase the efficiency of shop management,
supervision, and operations. The inauguration of the Work Improvement

--916--

Program was one of the outstanding technical accomplishments of SECP.
For the first time, the Navy Yards were training for advancement nearly
all of its industrial workers, and doing it is an organized way.

Utilization

Planned action to obtain the fullest utilization of available industrial
manpower became a necessity when the supply of skilled workers proved
insufficient to meet the wartime needs of industry and government. Threatened
shortages of indispensable skills early in the war led many employees
to take on more workers than they needed in anticipation of the day
when such skills would not be available at all. The Civil Service Commission
and the U.S. Employment Service as well as Congress were disturbed
over reports of labor hoarding and loafing in war plants.

On March 4, 1942, a SecNav letter stated that loafers were to be
suspended, supervisors were to strive for improved morale and an officer
was to make recommendations to the Commandant on personnel problems.
Utilization of women, older persons, and the physically handicapped was
recommended by the Civil Service Commission.

On February 10, 1943, the Department's concern over utilization was
expressed by Assistant Secretary Bard, who declared, "We must turn out
more work with the employees we have; per capita output must be increased."
Departmental pressure was increasing, but so far there had been
no specific instructions as to how available manpower could be more
fully utilized.

In the spring of 1943, the
War Manpower Commission (WMC)
established its Manpower Utilization Division, which authorized in-plant
surveys to determine the level of effectiveness and to make recommendations
for better utilization of labor. The Navy saw grave danger to the
morale of management and employees if visiting engineers were permitted
to enter and survey Navy Yards and industrial establishments with which
they had no familiarity at all. The problems of security also left some
doubts as to the wisdom of such surveys. The Navy Department decided
that, if it had to be investigated in this manner, it preferred to have the
survey made by the Civil Service Commission rather than by the War
Manpower Commission. After many conferences in Washington, an agreement
was worked out by which the Civil Service Commission served as
the operating staff of the WMC for surveys of naval activities. However,
the WMC still suspected the Navy of hoarding and not utilizing labor fully.

Liaison with the War Manpower Commission in the field was the
responsibility of the District Civilian Personnel Director. The Navy

--917--

Department took steps of its own to analyze its organization, and in November,
1943, the first instructions on utilization practices were issued by
the Assistant Secretary. This remained the basic directive on utilization
for the rest of the war. The directive called for the use of shore station
Personnel Relations Officers in executing local utilization programs and
as of November 12, 1943, announced the establishment, within the Executive
Office of the Secretary, of a Navy Manpower Survey Board. This
Board was the result of the Nary's determination to conduct its own
surveys of personnel in the shore establishment to determine whether they
were overmanned or undermanned and whether manpower was being used
to the best advantage.

Navy Manpower Survey Board

This Board, with Vice Admiral Adolphus Andrews, USN, as its senior
member, was appointed by Secretary Knox on November 12, 1943, and
was directed to make "surveys of all naval shore establishments in all
naval districts for the purpose of determining whether they are overmanned
or undermanned and whether the Navy's manpower is being utilized to
best advantage. Such surveys shall cover officers and enlisted men in the
Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, and all civilians of the Navy shore
establishments."

The surveys were made by hundreds of survey committees and groups
in the naval districts, each composed of selected regular and reserve naval
officers and of prominent civilians experienced in business management and
personnel administration. The survey covered 84,000 officers, 519,000 enlisted
personnel, and 677,500 civilians.

In its summary, the Board recommended that some 85,000 enlisted men
and officers be detached from billets in the naval districts, and thus made
available for duty in combat areas or in other billets where their services
would be more valuable to the war effort. I also recommended that some
34,500 additional male and 27,000 female civilians be employed to fill the
billets and that some be left unfilled. About 11,000 male civilians were
recommended for separation from government employment. The Board
further recommended that, in order to achieve maximum efficiency, civilian
personnel be increased in certain specified areas.

To implement its recommendations, the Board in most cases prepared
orders for the Secretary's signature, directing Commanding Officers to
carry out at the earliest practicable date the recommendations that were
made. Approximately 60 percent of the recommendations were carried out
in the course of the next ten months.

The making of routine periodic overall surveys to determine effectiveness
in the utilization of manpower, both civilian and in uniform, in the

--918--

shore establishments became a function of the Naval Inspector General
toward the end of the war.

Industrial Survey Division

The Industrial Survey Division, created on 20 June 1944, reported
directly to the Assistant Secretary. The Division reported surveys at eleven
of the larger Navy Yards and stations, and its recommendations were directed
primarily toward improving the performance of Personnel Relations
Officer duties. The personnel section of each report was forwarded to
SECP, which, in turn, sent them with comment and recommendations to
the Secretary. If the Secretary approved, he directed the cognizant bureaus
to see that the recommendations were carried out.

The Navy Management Program began in August 1943, and further
attacked the problem of manpower utilization. The program was a self-study
along the lines of authority and responsibility and definition of tasks and
standards of performance. It is extremely difficult to evaluate this program
in terms of better utilization accomplished during the war in view of the
varying attention given to it in different places and at different times. The
Office of the Management Engineer made an analysis of the use of the
program in wartime, and recommended that its use as a tool of personnel
management be continued.

In addition to these surveys, District Civilian Personnel Officers conducted
local utilization analyses, the value of which varied with the competence
of the individual officer as analysts and expositors.

All of these efforts, however, did not preclude Congress from joining
in the manpower survey and inspection field. The net result of Congressional
investigation was negligible, except perhaps that the constant threat
of visits from the legislative branch of the Government kept management
on the alert.

Civilian Personnel at Overseas Bases

Civilian personnel in large numbers were employed at many of the
Navy's overseas bases. Federal personnel laws seldom made special provision
for the employment of civilians by the Navy Department abroad,
and there was little reference to such employment in Navy Regulations
and other departmental instructions.

Other than for Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and the Canal Zone,
neither SOSED nor PS&M had given much thought to civilian personnel
problems that might arise during war at off-shore stations. it was assumed
that, in any case, personnel in uniform would, to a large extent, replace
civilian in the war areas and that such as remained would be

--919--

Tokyo Bay. Mount Fuji, Japan, as viewed from the Battleship South Dakota.

--920--

administered through the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. This included
native labor when employed by the Navy.

It seemed advisable, therefore, for the Assistant Secretary's office to
keep its hands off civilian personnel administration in combat areas. In
June of 1945, SECP proposed to CNO that qualified officers be sent on a
fact-finding tour of advanced areas to survey the situations.

In September 194t5, a tour was made of Atlantic bases, and the report
of the trip, dated 29 October 1945 described conditions found. Briefly, the
general conclusions reached by the survey team ere:

The Office of Industrial Relations provided clear-cut policy for received
insufficient consideration.

Too much dependence was being placed on uniformed personnel for
routine clerical and mechanical work.

United States government obligations for participation in the retirement
system of employees were being overlooked.

Among top echelons there existed a strong preference for personnel
in uniform.

The United States was held in low esteem in some places because
of the lack of consideration shown local people by naval personnel in general.

There was a lack of centralization of responsibility for civilian
personnel at many bases.

The same survey team was then sent to the Pacific area bases, and
submitted its report on 21 February 1946. The report's conclusions and
recommendations were generally similar to those submitted for the Atlantic
area, and may be summarized as follows:

The Office of Industrial Relations should procure and train a corps
of civilian personnel administrators, for duty in the Pacific area.

Future periodic visits should be made buy OIR representatives in
order to review programs and assist in solving problems.

OIR and CNO should arrange for better liaison in relating the
civilian personnel function to over-all long-range strategic planning.

Inspecting groups made it clear that there had been little coordination
between overseas civilian personnel practices and policies sponsored by the
Shore Establishments Division, the Division of Personnel Supervision and
Management, the Division of Shore Establishments and Civilian Personnel,
and the Office of Industrial Relations during the war and shortly thereafter.

--921--

Organization of SECP in June 1945

The final wartime organization of the Division of Shore Establishments
and Civilian Personnel is shown on
Figure 36
and consisted of five branches.
The largest was the Employment Branch, with three main sections. The
Recruitment Station, the Selective Service Section, and the Placement
Section. Nest came the Training Branch, which formulated all the civilian
training policies of the Department. The Wage Administration and
Classification Branch planned and administered the wage adjustment program
for unclassified employees and the classification program for white
collar workers. The Employment Relations Branch was responsible for policy
determination involving the handling of grievances and discipline, the
Beneficial Suggestions Program and manifold Employee Services for civilians
Following V-J Day, the Employee Relations Branch was consolidated
with the Employment Branch. The Safety Branch was responsible
for safety policies and methods in the field. The Labor Relations Branch,
which had been responsible for directing the Navy's effort to reduce the
number and length of strikes at plants of essential naval suppliers throughout
the war, was transferred to the Office of Procurement and Material
early in 1945 and was not part of the final organization of SECP. The
Administrative Services Branch performed the housekeeping functions for
SECP. This branch was responsible for statistics, and its Instructions Coordinating
Section was responsible for the preparation and editing of the
Navy Civilian Personnel Instructions. The Departmental Services Unit,
with its sections on Employment, Training, Classification, Counsel, and
Recreation for civilian employees of the Bureau and Offices in Washington,
was transferred to the Administrative Office of the Executive Office
of the Secretary in August of 1945.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Bard, in a memorandum of May 15,
1945, summarized the state of development of SECP and its objectives for
the future. He pointed out the great progress that had bee made, but
that there was need for even greater attention in the future to this vital
sector of Navy Department administration. He wished the Navy Department
to acquire a reputation as a progressive, fair, and efficient employer.

The key to improved employee relations lay, he said, in the application
of the personnel policies that had emerged form the crucible of war,
but that policies, no matter how sound, are not automatic assurance that
sound employee relations will result therefrom. Assuming the adoption of
adequate personnel policies, satisfactory employer-employee relationships
must still depend on the proper attitude of the lower levels of management
toward labor and their ability to handle people.

The Navy's personnel policy problems differed from those of private
enterprise because policies were circumscribed by law, Executive Orders,

--922--

and the need for conformity with the procedures of certain outside agencies
such as the Civil Service Commission. But this he considered no excuse
for adhering blindly to such controls without making an effort to change
them when this was deemed necessary.

An important policy, reaffirmed when SECP was established, was that
the Navy Department would not take over the operation of the civilian
personnel machinery either in the Navy Department or in the field, but
that its functions would be coordinative, advisory, and policy-making. Within
the framework of policy established by the Navy Department. Bureau
Chiefs were held responsible for the adequacy of personnel administration
within their respective bureaus, and at the shore establishments under
their jurisdiction. He pointed out that the task of applying established
personnel policies firmly, equitably and with good judgment, tested squarely
with operating management. The Division of SECP acted for him in establishing
civilian personnel policy, and in recommending important
changes. He looked to SECP to advise and assist the bureaus and the
shore establishments on all civilian personnel matters, and to coordinate
the Navy Department's programs to insure the maintenance of high and
uniform standards, but not to issue orders telling them how to do their jobs.

Investigation by House of Representatives Subcommittee

A House of Representatives Naval Affairs Subcommittee early in the
summer of 1945 held hearings on the Navy Department's handling of
civilian personnel in its shore establishments. The subcommittee in its
report challenged some of the Navy's philosophy in administering this
large sector of its activities.13
The principal criticisms of the subcommittee
were that the Director of SECP

"does not make any formal surveys to
determine the effectiveness of the operation of civilian personnel
programs. ... It will not interfere with the internal operation of an establishment
unless its advice is requested. ... The question is raised at this
point as to the means of methods employed in the Navy Department in
implementing the Executive Order
(7916)
of 1938 that directed that a
division be established in each Government Department which 'shall supervise
the functions of appointment, assignment, service rating, and training
of employees. ... and shall initiate and supervise such programs.' ... In
none of these functions does the Division supervise the operation of the
programs developed buy it. In fact, the Director disclaims any intention to
intervene in the operation of any program in the field establishment. ...

--923--

It seems that the reason some organization in the Under Secretary's Office
does not supervise the operation of personnel programs is because the
effectiveness of civilian personnel operations rests with the Chiefs of
Bureaus and Commanding Officers of shore establishments.' However the
responsibility to supervise the operation of civilian personnel programs
at the Departmental level cannot be abdicated because further operational
responsibility exists at the Bureau and Establishment level."

"... The Division has not developed procedures in all its Branches
for systematic surveys of and reports from industrial shore establishments.
Without organized and coordinated factual data gathered at the source it
is difficult to see how the Under Secretary can be adequately informed
when changes in Policy are necessary. ... After basic directives or regulations
have been issued the Division moves into action only upon
solicitation of a Bureau or establishment and does not put itself in a
position either to determine how a program is operating or to issue a
warning in anticipation of problems. ... The Division is the actor and
not merely the adviser of industrial shore establishments in the fields of
Selective Service, Wage Administration, and Classification of Group IVb
employees. The reluctance to assume, or the disclaimer of vitality in other
areas of civilian personnel administration appears to have no justification.
There is little to defend the failure by the Division of its duty to supervise
the civilian personnel program of the Navy even though there is a
responsibility at lower levels of management for the execution of such programs."

The Committee made three broad recommendations, stating first that
the Division of Shore Establishments and Civilian Personnel should "have
and exercise power to ... require compliance with basic programs
originated by such organization."

This was in indictment of the entire wartime handling of civilian personnel.
The Committee placed its finger on the real anomaly when it
pointed out that SECP did act on the details of wage determination and
classification, but this was actually quite a different matter from participating
in the day-by-day management of civilian personnel in the Navy's
far-flung shore establishments.

The philosophy of line responsibility adopted by SECP was in full
accord with modern administrative thinking. Such inadequacy as existed
in the program was not due to any false premise concerning responsibility,
but perhaps was due to the absence of organized and coordinated
fact finding for use in advising those ultimately responsible for operations.

Properly limiting itself to the exercise of a staff function, SECP at the
same time avoided responsibility for making surveys and recommendations
without invitation. It believed that uninvited survey constitutes an

--924--

assumption of line authority, whereas it is an essential staff tool for gaining
required information on which to base sound recommendations.

This philosophy survived the Johnson Committee criticisms, and continues
to be the accepted philosophy of the Navy and of Federal personnel
administrators generally.

The Committee was hypercritical and did not have before it the full
record of the extended activities of each branch of the Navy Department.
The report presented an incomplete picture of the operation, and many
of its specific criticisms were based upon misconception of the scope of
the task of the sections criticized. The Johnson report also overlooked
the fact that the House Naval Affairs Committee had disapproved the
recommendations of Secretary Edison and Rear Admiral Fisher in 1940
for the establishment of an all-powerful Director of shore industrial activities.
Finally, the report gave no recognition to the fact that civilian
personnel policies and practices of the Navy were in a chaotic state when
sECP was established, and did not credit them with any of the enormous
accomplishments of SECP in the brief time it had existed.
[Hyperwar tried, but can't refrain from commenting: Admiral Furer, along
with the Bureau chiefs, District and Yard Commandants, and all the other petty
fiefdoms of the Navy seem a little hazy on the concept of civilian control.
From Furer's own account, the chaos he mentions appears to have been the
direct result of the Navy's (ie. SECP's predecessor agencies) somewhat lax
response to a Congressional demand for improved personnel management. It would
have been a dereliction of duty for the Committee's report to have let the
Navy off the hook because it took them so long to implement
improvements. Rather than respond to the report with such defensiveness, the
historian might have expressed relief that no courts martial resulted from
this failure!]

On August 17, 1945, Under Secretary of the Navy Artemus L. Gates
made a formal reply to Mr. Vinson, Chairman of the House Naval Affairs
Committee with reference to the Johnson report. Of the Report's three
recommendations, the Navy was in accord with the last two, namely, that
an improved cost accounting system be set up in all naval shore establishments,
(actually cost accounting at navy yards goes back to the first
decade of the century), and that the Bureau system of control under which
all shore activities be modified to assign management control to a single
bureau--the bureau chosen being the one with paramount interests in the
activity. The Navy placed both of these recommendations in effect, but
took no action on the first recommendation for the reasons given above.
[Not, technically, a "refusal to obey a direct order", but definitely not
the humble acceptance of civilian authority that is given so much lip
service. --HyperWar]

Office of Industrial Relations

With the crystallization of thinking, base on war experience, in respect
to all aspects of civilian employment and management, it was decided
in September 1945 to change the name of the Division of Shore Establishments
and Civilian Personnel (SECP) to the Office of Industrial
Relations (OIR), as more nearly descriptive of the functions of the office.
In summarizing its functions, objectives and missions, at a later date, it
was stated that "The Office of Industrial Relations acts in a staff capacity
for the Assistant Secretary of the Navy in all matters concerning naval
civilian employees. OIR's technical and advisory functions do not in any
sense encroach on the line management responsibilities of the Bureaus
and Offices of the Navy Department for the proper administration of the

--925--

Navy's Industrial Relations program in the Naval Shore Establishment.

a. Objective--Under direct supervision of the Assistant Secretary of the
Navy (Personnel and Reserve Forces), the primary objective of the Office
of Industrial Relations is established as follows:

To establish a fair and effective civilian personnel administration
throughout the Naval Establishment which will contribute
both to job satisfaction on the part of officers and
employees and to efficient public service.

b. Missions--The following major missions are prescribed in order that
the established objective may be attained:

The development of the Navy's industrial relations program for
civilian employees.

The development of policies governing that program.

Advising and assisting bureaus, offices and field activities in the
operation of the program.

Summary

The steps paid off that were taken during the immediate prewar period,
to start training the shipbuilding trades that would be in short supply in the
event of war. So also did the enrollment somewhat later as reserve officers
of specialists in the labor training and labor management fields.

Organizationally, the most important step in civilian personnel administration
was the merger of the Shore Establishments Division and the Division
of Personnel Supervision and Management to form the Division of
Shore Establishment and Civilian Personnel with a competent and experienced
career naval officer at its head. This move should have been made
earlier in the war.

Clarification of the basic policy that SECP was primarily a staff organization
and not an operating activity was one of the early fruits of the
merger. For too long, those concerned with Navy Department civilian personnel
management had vacillated between the operating and the staff
concepts of their duties, with the result that neither the bureaus nor the
commanding officers of shore stations had a clear idea as to where they stood.

The Navy already had cordial and highly cooperative relations with
the Civil Service Commission, which were heightened by the war, but
there was a definite lack of mutual confidence between the Navy and the
War Manpower Commission.

The success of the Navy in winning the confidence and cooperation of
the Selective Service organization and the important contribution made by

--926--

SECP to the development of Selective Service deferment techniques is
significant in this connection.

The requirement that Personnel Relations Divisions be established in
all major shore stations was one of the outstanding forward steps taken
in labor-management relations. It was initiated by the Shore Establishments
Division and developed further by its successor the SECP. Without
this tool of management, the tremendous expansion of civilian personnel
at the larger navy yards and other stations would have been well nigh impossible.

The inauguration of the Work Improvement Program as a means of
improving the supervisory practices of the lower management echelons was
a worthwhile forward step.

Bringing together in codified, well-indexed and clearly phrased form
the many and diverse instructions of the Navy Department on the subject
of civilian personnel was a herculean task, but began to pay dividends
rapidly in better understanding and improved practices in the bureaus and
in the field. By the end of the war, some 2,000 pages of instructions under
the name of Navy Civilian Personnel Instructions (NCPI) had been issued
and have been under constant scrutiny and revision to keep them in step
with changing conditions.

4.
Accurate figures as to the number of shore activities employing Navy Department civilian
personnel during World War II are not available. A "Catalogue of Activities of the Navy" was
published for the first time in March 1945, and lists a total of 4,722 activities, of which 515 were
overseas. Presumably, practically all of these employed some civilian labor. In July 1938, the
Public Works of the Navy Data Book listed 485 activities, but again, there is no clear line of
demarcation between those that were manned exclusively by personnel in uniform and those that
employed at least some civilians.

5.
Included in the reorganization of the Naval Districts at the end of the war was the assignment
of management control of each of the shore activities to some one of the bureaus. The commandants,
as in the past, exercise military control of the districts, but take no part in the management
of the industrial and similar activities in their districts. Shipyard commanders (formerly
called Commandants of Navy Yards), for example, are drawn from the ranks of career officers
limited to engineering duty, and have the last word in civilian personnel matters, subject of course
always to final review by the Navy department. Most of these officers throughout their careers,
with the exception of a few tours of sea or other duty, are employed on work involving the management
of civilian personnel. In that way, many of them acquire broader and more extensive
practical experience in labor-management work than many of the specialists in this field in civilian
life.

It is significant that Assistant Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, after four years of experience
in dealing with the civilian personnel sector of Navy Department administration, selected Rear Admiral
F.G. Crisp, USN, with Captain E.E. Sprung, USN as his principal assistant, and not
civilian specialists, to head the new Division of Shore Establishments and Civilian Personnel.
Both were career naval officers with long experience in dealing with civilian personnel.

6.
Among the civilians brought into the Navy Department during the war, who made outstanding
contributions to the administration of civilian personnel, were Samuel H. Ordway, Jr., Charles
R. Peck, H. Lee White, and A.C. Wolfe. ll were commissioned in the Naval Reserve.

7.
Hearings in the House of Representatives--Sundry Naval Legislation--76th Congress, 2nd
and 3rd Sessions, 1939-1940, H.R. No. 313 (Revised). These hearings contain a wealth of information
furnished by officers on duty in the bureaus and other officers of the Navy Department, on
the administration of the Navy Department during that period. The testimony of Captain Fisher
is particularly illuminating in differentiating between the military and non-military functions of the
Navy Department and its shore establishments as viewed by many naval officers and civilians, and
on the changes Charles Edison considered necessary to make it possible for the Secretary of the
Navy to carry out his shore establishment responsibilities more effectively.

10.
Report of Survey of Current and Proposed Personnel Activity in Navy Department, 16 May
1939, by Charles Piozet, Director of Personnel.

11.
Section 1 of Public Law 330, 84th Congress, passed August 9, 1955.

12.
Those interested in further details of the Navy's handling of employee group relations will
find the procedures described in "Navy Civilian Personnel Instructions" issued by the Office of
Industrial Relations from time to time.

13.
Management of the Naval Shore Establishment. A Report of the Johnson*
Subcommittee of the Committee on Naval Affairs, House of Representatives, 79th Congress, 1st session (Washington:
GPO, 1945). The letter of transmittal of the report is without date, and hearings
themselves undated.
* Lyndon B. Johnson, Congressman [later President! --HyperWar] from Texas.

Transcribed and formatted for HTML by Patrick Clancey, HyperWar Foundation